


A Thousand Words

by accioslash



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Young Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 11:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8749561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accioslash/pseuds/accioslash
Summary: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes you don't need any words at all.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torino10154](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torino10154/gifts).



  
_“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.”_  
― Anne Sexton

The small boy wearing a flowered apron in the picture bears a haunting resemblance to the present-day Snape - same scowl, same piercing gaze. Even in the black and white Muggle photograph, those familiar eyes catch at Harry's heart and he smiles widely in response, his own eyes crinkled with amusement.

"You can't have been more than four or five," he muses, holding the picture out for Snape to see. He has appropriated a corner of the floor at Spinner's End that he painstakingly cleared of books, scrolls, quills and other rubbish for his latest walk down Snape's personal memory lane. At least this time he has no need of a Pensieve.

Snape peers down at him from his position on the threadbare sofa, where he is valiantly pretending to read the latest edition of _Potions Monthly_ and is absolutely _not_ discomfited by Harry pawing through his old photographs. He immediately recognizes the ratty smock that had belonged to his mother. 

"Seven," he grumbles, turning pages angrily.

"Seven? Really? Look at how short you were!"

Snape grimaces, throwing down the journal, all pretense of uninterest abandoned, and snatches the picture out of his hand.

"Hey!" Harry protests, struggling to keep Snape from taking the box of photographs. "Give those back. You already said I could look at them."

Harry looks up at Snape who is watching him through narrowed eyes but, hard as he tries, he cannot put a name to what he can read in those eyes, though he can identify it well enough when Snape finally comes to a decision.

"Fine. You may keep them, but you're not to mock me."

"Mock you? Wait... are you sensitive about being short as a kid?"

Snape's warning glance would have quailed a lesser man, but Harry is neither a lesser man nor easily intimidated. And he has built up an immunity to Snape's withering glares over time. 

"At least pictures of you as a child exist. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon couldn't be arsed to take any of me though you could paper a row of three-storey flats with pictures of Dudley. Besides, I think you can certainly hold your own against me if we're trading insults."

Snape takes a moment to consider this and with a deft move, Harry wraps his thumb and forefinger around Snape's wrist and gives an encouraging pull until Snape is gracefully folding himself into a comfortable position beside the box on the floor. 

"You _were_ a myopic little twit as a child, weren't you?"

"Don't even start. And I know you can do much better than a crack about me needing spectacles. If anyone here was short as a child, it wasn't _you_." Harry experienced a growth spurt during his sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts and recalled with great satisfaction (and a not inconsiderable pang of heartache) that as an adult he and James Potter were of a height. 

"My mother couldn't cook. Or, more accurately, she refused to learn to cook in a Muggle kitchen." Eileen Snape never had much appetite for anything beyond tea and there was little enough money to waste on variety when the basic staples would suffice. Snape pauses, reluctant to say more, but pushes on. "My father did all the cooking." 

In fact, it was actually Tobias Snape who had nurtured young Severus's nascent interest in potions, however unwittingly. Even now, decades later, Snape can still recall hours spent at his father's side collecting and cataloging wild herbs and perfecting combinations of seasonings and methods of distillation that the elder Snape used to make jams and marmalade and preserve fruit as well as brew his locally famous "Toby's Own" beer. The longing and regret he feels as the memories flicker through his mind is too deep and makes him ache in ways too painful to articulate more precisely, even to Harry. 

"There should also be a photograph of the two of us playing [conkers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers) that was taken around the same time. He was quite the formidable opponent."

Harry searches the box until he finds the picture of Severus and a hook-nosed man who could only be his father. He looks it over curiously, noting the surprising lack of acrimony between the two.

Before Harry can comment, Severus explains, "Despite what you may have believed, my relationship with my father did not become intolerable until years later. At the time this picture was taken, he was happy to pass along whatever knowledge he had, and I was eager to learn. It wasn't until after he lost his position at the mill and it became apparent that I would never have a life in the Muggle world that our relationship deteriorated beyond all possibility of mending."

Nothing more is spoken on the subject and Harry looks through the box, now and again pushing different pictures towards Snape for comment. The pictures bring long-buried memories to the surface and Severus begins to feel raw and scraped and dry. The mood in the room becomes awkward and uncomfortable until, feigning a yawn, Harry announces, "I'm going to bed." 

Standing, it's Snape who closes the narrow gap between them, and the kiss he gives Harry is tentative at first, his mouth soft and warm, and Harry feels himself falling deeper and deeper.

He sets the box of photographs on the sofa, replaces the lid, then leaves a trail of clothes like breadcrumbs marking his passage toward the bedroom, eager for Snape to follow. Harry recalls the lean, hungry look in Severus's eyes. Like the boy in the pictures, wanting to be cherished, held, and loved and having no idea how to ask for it.

Harry makes sure he doesn't have to ask.

-The End-


End file.
